20/09/2015

20/09/2015; 23:00:

It's weird writing a different year next to your birth date. So, this is it! Birthday Blog post!


My birthday began well, with the end term exams coming to an end.
We then proceeded to have a large party, sending out invites to everyone- a message was duly posted on each section group.
I cut two cakes- one courtesy the party people and the other courtesy the Media Comm team. I managed to escape getting any cake on me- mostly thanks to my friend’s efforts. I’m positively terrified of getting cake on me- I don’t actually know why- I just have this bad memory from long ago of spontaneously bursting into tears when cake found its way to my face.
I was then up earlier than usual, for a Sunday. We headed out for lunch at O2 Café for they have nice food. Once back on campus, we resumed our usual ambling around, for there wasn’t much else to do. There was then a Batch-Meet scheduled at 11:30 p.m.- the perfect close to a perfect Birthday.
Later in the night, we proceeded to have another party in the girls’ hostel.

I think it was a good day!

19/09/2015

19/09/2015; 21:00:

16th was the last day of classes for term 1, for the end term exams were to begin on 17th morning.
We had a marketing class at 11:45 a.m. - the last class for Term 1. It was an interesting class, as usual and ended in smiles.
Later, we attempted to get some studying done- my approach to this was to take a 6-hour long nap.
At around 9 p.m., I made my way to SR-17 to read some OB. We agreed to split the readings- I began reading from the first one and my friend began reading from the last one- the idea was to read half & half and then discuss.
There was a take-home quiz to be done and sent in by mid-night, for the OB course. There was a reading along with the questions, explaining the whole idea of Transactional Analysis. It is indeed a very fascinating idea. We e-mailed the completed document to sir- and, he replied to each person individually, thanking them for their submission! Sir is awesome!
I went off to Mess 1, at around midnight, to celebrate the birthday of one of our Media Committee team members. I think she must’ve cut atleast 3 cakes, all of which eventually ended up on her head. Some food at night mess later, I was back in SR-17.
Readings done, we lounged on the terrace, before getting to our planned ‘discussion’. A couple of other people settled wherever they could find space, to listen in. That was that. There wasn’t anything much to study for the Accounts paper, since sir had done an excellent job of the classroom teaching. Explaining the cash flow to a few separate groups of people and attempting to learn up the different financial analysis ratios later, we were done and headed off to sleep.

17th morning began with the Accounts paper- it was a fairly simple paper that covered the exact topics that we’d gone over. I was done writing, about an hour into a two-hour long paper. I headed to my room via Mess 2 to read the remaining readings of OB anyway.
Meanwhile, Zephyr held their second workshop for the academic year, on ‘Reflections on your Perceptions’ at 12 p.m. They seem to be scheduling all their workshops to ensure that I cannot be present (of course, that isn’t true- everyone has different conflicting schedules and the least offensive is selected)
The OB paper at 2:30 p.m. was fairly simple and only about an hour long. One good thing about the end-terms was that the morning paper began only at 10 a.m. and not any earlier.

In the evening, at around 6 p.m., Ganesh Chaturthi celebrations began- Ganapati Staphna was done in the late evening, in the SR-10 basement.
Meanwhile, all the IPM-2 students sent out surveys to the institute, on topics ranging from happiness to beauty. There was a paper to be written as part of their Psychology course that merited all this data be collected.

And then, since it was Thursday, Globe@I decided to do a re-run of their previous week’s late night show, with fried rice and chilly chicken/paneer on offer.
Of course, I returned from the OB Mid-term and promptly fell asleep. The plan was to do a re-run of the previous night and get some studying done. I woke up only in the middle of the night i.e. at 3 a.m.
I made some half-hearted attempts at studying Micro-Economics before falling asleep again. The paper was, as promised, significantly easier than the mid-term exam. There was even a smiley face next to the instructions, informing us that there would be no negative marking on this one!

I went over my QT notes in the few hour gap between the papers; the QT paper began at 2:30 p.m. and was 3 hours long! Perhaps, to make up for the Eco paper, this one was significantly more difficult than the mid-term exam.

Uber is on board, partnering with our upcoming fest, IRIS. As part of the deal, we received a promo code on e-mail that entitles the holder to 2 free rides around Indore!

There wasn’t any studying to be done for both the end-terms the next day, so lots of sleep was in order.

19th morning began with the OM paper- it was an open book/notes exam and the paper was mainly a bunch of cases to be analysed and solved. One question even asked about the Student Mess and what can be done to increase its capacity.
The last end-term, Marketing, began at 2 p.m. – we were greeted with a 25-page long case as soon as we entered the exam hall. The examination was 3 and a half hours long, mostly to give enough time to read through the case.

At 8 p.m., in keeping with the occasion of Ganesh Chaturthi, there was a Maharashtrian feast arranged for, in Mess 3.
Most of us headed out to eat, right after the exam ended- restaurants nearby were completely packed, and all with IIM-Indore PGP1’s!

Meanwhile, a lot of the different events as part of IRIS have opened registrations and we’ve been receiving mails, accordingly. Voice of Indore is in full swing, with auditions held at DAVV, recently.

The evening wore on and the clock ticked, all closer to my birthday !

15/09/2015

14/09/2014; 05:44:

And, Atharv is finally at a close. After 3 crazy days of events, fun, music, friends- new & old, prizes and food, here we are, at 6 a.m. on a Monday morning.

15/09/2015; 19:47:

Well, it isn’t 6 a.m. anymore, for all that fun surely got me tired and sleeping!

11th morning- Atharv Day 1 began with the opening ceremony in the New Auditorium. I-Conclave- the panel discussion began soon after. Unfortunately, I had classes until 1 p.m. and missed all of this.
Right after class, I headed down to the HRC, to see all the participants pouring in! A short drizzle, a trip to the laundry to pick up my clothes (after a really long time; clothes that I hadn’t worn in forever had made an appearance even!) and a quick stop at Mess 2 later, I was in my room. I much needed nap (for our marketing assignment had kept us awake through the night) later, I headed to the Academic block. War of Words- the Parliamentary Debate event of Atharv was in progress. Some searching (I found the B-Plan event and the MUN) eventually led me to the right classroom. I was rather excited to be judging the debates, after a brief stint at last year’s event! Meanwhile, Finopoly- the Finance event went on in the adjoining block and Vanity- the Fashion Show progressed in the New Auditorium. A couple of interesting debates later, by which time it was nearly 7:30 p.m., we strolled across to the central lawn where a considerable number of food stalls were set up- Chick n’ Serve, Ice Cream, Thick Shake, Burger Planet (an old staple), Mashal, Kolkatta Rolls and a Hyderabadi Biryani guy who’d actually flown in from Hyderabad just for the event! A lot of these stalls were perhaps making their maiden appearance on the IIM-I campus and we were glad to have change. Some food later, the Old Audi beckoned- the sector-wise preparatory sessions arranged for by the Industry Interaction Cell- the day’s sessions focused on the Retail Sector and the Pharma Industry. Organized Retail has only 7% penetration in the Indian Market- we discussed in detail, the rise and fall of Subhiksha and the problems that current players in the sector are facing. The Pharma sector is a fairly technical one and we dealt with technical terms before moving on to other details including that 70% of all Pharma products are exported. The speaker wondered if there were any persons with a pharmacy background in the audience- one sleeping girl immediately shot her hand up, deciding that she was a doctor. Only when she was asked for expert opinions on the subject did she realize what she’d managed to volunteer for; the engineer in her was promptly wide awake and refuting any relation to the field whatsoever. Well, it did make for an interesting interruption.
At around 8:30 p.m., the much awaited Comedy Night titled the ‘Unsingle Tour’ featuring Biswa and Kaneez Surka, both of YouTube fame, began in the New Auditorium. It certainly had the audience in splits- a very large audience- the Audi was definitely filled beyond capacity!
After the session and some more food later, I was once again in the Old Audi, this time to watch the opening round of ‘Game of Shadows’- the Game Theory event of Atharv- it’s one of the more mind-boggling events and is fun to watch! There were over a hundred participants. The first round was simple- each participant had to pick a number (any number from 0 to the uncountable) and they would receive points depending on how close they got to the mean of all numbers chosen. They had 15 minutes to wander about, discussing, trying to find out what everyone else was up to, before locking in their numbers. Various theories including the ‘zero’ idea were perpetrated.
The next round dealt with more numbers- this time, points were to be awarded to the smallest, most unique selection. One guy in the crowd- who was promptly labelled ‘green T-shirt guy’ had taken it upon himself to explain Game Theory to everyone who would listen. It was rather surprising to see a lot of people listening rather intently. By the end of 4 rounds- which included arriving at the median of all numbers and correctly predicting your rank at the end of the last 3 rounds- he had managed to explain the Prisoner’s Dilemma about 3 times. Towards the end of the second round, I, deciding that the event was getting a tad bit too serious jumped on stage and got talking. We got people to perform on stage- some wonderful singing was seen- and eventually handed the mike over to the green T-shirt guy, to help him reach out to his audience better.
Once the event had wrapped up, a lot of us headed to the night mess. It was well past 4 a.m., when we headed to the lawn near JAM/SR 10. A lot of people were sitting, randomly scattered across the lawn and the footpaths- some talking, some sleeping, some playing music, others singing along- perfect festive mood! We joined one group who were singing popular Bollywood tracks, complete with a guitar, a keyboard and some beats! I finally headed to my room to add some finishing touches to the marketing assignment. There was time for a quick nap before 8:45 class.

11th night seamlessly merged into 12th morning even before we knew what was happening. It was the last QT session of the term and for unbeknownst reasons, the class was being recorded on video. We also had a quick quiz in the last OB session. Right after class ended, I headed over to judge more debates. Meanwhile, Vendition Vendatta - the Marketing event- went on in the next block. The participants who were in teams of 2 to 5 members were asked to pitch one of two obscure products- a torn tennis ball or a used deodorant can. Fascinating. I headed off to meet the marketing professor, in a short gap between debates. Each of the project groups had been assigned a slot to meet with the professor and discuss the case analysis assigned to them. Now, most groups, including the two who went right before us spent at least half an hour with the faculty, perhaps answering questions or defending their solutions. Our group, well, we got to spend exactly 5 minutes before our assignment was deemed done well; great feeling!
The last debate for the day was the semi-final and, what a beautiful debate it was - replete with strong logical arguments and well-timed humour. A paintball set-up was arranged, right next to our hostel and a zorbing one too- on the slope that leads to the stairs down to Patal-lok. Fests are indeed fun. Some food later, I headed to the Old Audi, for the penultimate session of the Industry Deep Dive series. We discussed the IT & Telecom sectors- the Telecom sector has really seen a lot of changes in the past decade, from the GSM / CDMA trade-off to price wars and now rising call tariffs and super-fast data plans.
This ended, as the speaker put it, ‘at the stroke of the midnight hour’. Soon after, I was in NC-1, watching Round 2 of the Game of Shadows in progress. It was a blind trading game- each team was given a random set of items to begin with; the aim of the game was to collect at least one of each type of item available in the game. Additionally, the teams had to guess the market value of each of the items being traded. It was interesting to see the teams break into members, head into 5 separate rooms and trade, without knowing what exactly their team-mates were upto.
The top 24 participants made it to the third round. Here, each participant was allotted a house- there were a total of 8 houses and 3 members in each. Now, no one was aware of anyone else’s allotment. The task was simple- you had to correctly guess the other two members of your house- they would then be eliminated and you’d make it to the top 8. This went on till nearly 6 a.m.
Walking back down to the hostel, I once again found people settled on the lawn, having a good time. This time, I checked with one of them, for my curiousity got the better of me- had the organizing team actually failed to arrange accommodation for these people- it seems that accommodation had been allotted starry night sky was alluring.
Sunday- 13th- the final day of Atharv 2015- the finales of most events including the debate were held. The Game of Shadows finale was rather interesting- survey questions were presented to the top 8 participants. The top 10 answers to these questions had been curated from a random sample of IPM students, earlier in the month. The participants would receive points if their answer matched one of the existing answers- with increasing points for answers lower down on the list. The participants were then informed that one of them was the ‘shadow’ and had the answer key- the challenge was to identify this shadow and eliminate him/her. At the end of each round, the identified ‘shadow’ was eliminated. The catch of course was that each of the 8 participants were ‘shadows’- of course, none of them knew that!
Much earlier on Sunday morning, we had the last session of the Industry Deep Dive series- this dealt with the Banking industry.
The highlight of the last day was the VH1 Supersonic Dance evening that ran well past mid-night. It was fun, music and beats at its finest! Meanwhile, we rushed around, submitting forms for our summer internships. I, like the genius that I am, did not remember to stick a photograph on the form- it just completely slipped my mind. I only realised that said photograph was missing when I went in to submit my form and was promptly informed of the missing element. It was then a hurried trip back to the hostel and then back again.

We sat around on the central lawn- the participants wishing to soak in the atmosphere at Planet-I and Atharv, one last time before they had to reluctantly leave; the organizing team finally enjoying some peace of mind, and random other people who found the weather & mood very agreeable. A round of Antakshari, some games of Truth & Dare and Charades were indulged in, as was harmless banter and insightful talk.
A quick stop at the night mess for tea later, we re-settled near SR10, where someone had set up a music system and a party was in full swing! Everyone left to get some sleep, only by day-break. Truly, a wonderful, crazy three days!

Then, there was Monday, 14th September- falling back into routine after the joyous chaos of the last three days was surprisingly effortless- one of those things that life here at IIM-Indore gets you used to!
We had a Marketing Class where our group had to present not one, but, two different presentations- one on the case in question that dealt with a Fashion TV Channel and another which summarized a book that details the importance of the customer in business-related decision-making.
Later in the afternoon, we had an Accounts Quiz- the quiz was fairly simple. I then spent some time in the library, reading the Reader’s Digest- it’s a beautiful compilation of articles- and has been my primary reason for visiting the library over the last 3 years.
At 10 p.m., Mercur-I, the Marketing Club had arranged for the second installment of their ‘Marketing Capsules’ series- here, a couple of PGP2’s who’d done internships in the marketing area shared their experiences. Mercur-I has gotten themselves personalized T-shirts printed- they’re a beautiful shade of red, with the club name & IIM-Indore on the back and the member’s name on the bottom left corner on the front. Media Comm ought to get T-shirts too!

Today i.e. 15th was a good day. I rushed to the library in the morning, to get our marketing assignment completed in time for class at 11:45 a.m. We’d worked on the assignment a long time ago and only the final report was left to be compiled, so it took only about half an hour. The marketing class was interesting- there was a case discussion and a presentation that spoke of the ‘Indian Middle Class’ - its complexities mainly.

We then had an OM Quiz at 2:30. The Quiz was fairly simple. The last question was rather absurd, introducing a non-existent crane into the equation- my solution was simple- I sketched a beautiful looking crane into the answer space and that was it.
Some food later, here I am, at the writing board again- and, I love it!

11/09/2015

11/09/2015; 04:09:

It’s been a long day, today! But as always, let’s begin right where we left off!
6th September was the birthday of our CR and we had a blast- mostly on the Whatsapp group, but, well. Her new phone is now the latest topic of discussion. I spent a good part of 6th night ordering stuff online- mostly deodorants, for well, retail stores just don’t cut it anymore!
7th morning began with a few classes; later in the afternoon, there was a guest lecture to attend. It was mainly focused on the IT industry, more specifically, how it is changing the way most other businesses operate- everything from banks making lending decisions to sales people making decisions now relies heavily on large databases and automation of processes. In the evening, we headed out to Indore city, and got ourselves some nice pasta for dinner!

8th morning began with classes too- it was the last Accounts session and sir ended the course with a heartfelt speech- he’s really awesome! All the engineers in the class have managed to pick up the basics of accounting rather too well, all thanks to him! It was the last session of Business Communication too, and we indulged in verbal proposals- the product chosen to be sold was a yellow pencil-box, courtesy the lady on the first bench who owns said pencil-box. Creativity was at its fullest as people linked the yellow to the minions franchise and even quoted non-existent studies about the colour! After classes ended for the day, we headed over to see our MicroEconomics quiz papers. There was then an interesting talk to be attended.
At 5 p.m., the group leaders for the Industrial Visit groups made their way to the Old Auditorium, to pick industries. Now, we’d already made our expectations very clear to our group leader- he’d better pick an interesting industry, preferably one related to food. The session was clearly a success- we will be visiting an alloy industry, in the near future. In his defence, the group leader isn’t too responsible for this mismatch of interest, after all, the allocation was based on a lucky draw- where chits were picked out. Since it was Tuesday, Royal Sandwich was on campus- clearly, it’s making its presence felt- unlike the other cases whose discussion is limited to a session or two only, Royal Sandwich has been a constant, all through the OM course. It is hard to be buying sandwiches from them, without all the OM concepts, including bottlenecks, capacity planning and resource allocation, coming to mind.

9th, aka Wednesday began with a MicroEconomics class where we learnt about Externalities- the positive or negative effect that results as a consequence of another activity- and is most often not taken into account when the equilibrium is determined in a free market. You pay only for your phone connection, but gain from the positive externality that results from each individual who purchases one- giving you that many more people to call! Right after was the last session of the OM course- we all handed in a rather interesting assignment- a single-page write-up that documented our learnings from the course.
Post-lunch, we had an SMOD (Spreadsheet Modelling) Quiz, at 2:30 p.m. A password-protected data file was shared with us an hour before the quiz. The quiz itself was fairly simple, employing most of what we’d gone over in class. The collection of our answer sheets- excel sheets this time, took almost as long as the exam itself! After viewing our QT Mid-Term answer sheets and changing into business formals,we headed over to the Old Auditorium for a guest lecture focusing on Credit Risk Analysis and its importance. There are so many things going on in the world; just thinking about them is amazing.
Soon after, we headed back to the Old Audi for another session. The Industry Interaction Cell has decided to organize a series titled ‘Industry Deep Dive’ where, each session explores one particular industry, over the course of an hour. This first session was about E-Commerce. The person conducting the sessions is really nice- it was interactive and very helpful. We spoke about growth drivers for the industry, new happenings in the industry and the idea of e-commerce players shifting to be mobile-only.

Early on 10th morning, a pooja was arranged, to invoke the blessings of the Lord, for a successful second edition of Atharv! And, from the looks of it, it definitely looks all set to succeed! There was then class at 10:15- a nice change from the 8:45 routine we’d gotten used to for a while now. After classes, there was a guest lecture to attend- this whole week’s been pretty busy, that way. I then had a short nap, before heading to the Old Audi for session 2 of the Industry Deep Dive series. Today, we spoke about the FMCG industry and Consumer Durables. I guess the FMCG sector is very appealing, mostly because it is the easiest to relate to! Since it was Thursday- the day when there’s no Night Mess, we headed over to Globe@I, around 11:30 p.m. They had a special ‘Late Night Show’ and were serving up fried rice and chilly chicken. Soon after, our assigned study group collected in the library, to work on the marketing assignment. The case in question deals with a Fashion TV channel and its marketing strategy. After dividing up the work, some people headed back to their rooms while we continued to sit around in the library, getting some work done and well, doing other stuff too.
All through the day, Atharv participants have been arriving, roaming around campus- there were so many people around even when I walked back to my room at 4 a.m.! And, these Nukkad Natak guys have positively scary levels of energy. Even as I type, I can hear them practising, outside my window! And, they aren’t even right outside, they’re on Level 2 of the campus, near Mess 2. I can hear them, not just random cacophony, but, actual clear words.
Atharv’s opening ceremony is scheduled to begin at 9 a.m.; there are over 1200 participants, this year; looking forward to an interesting, crazy 3 days!

06/09/2015

06/09/2015; 13:13:

It’s been an eventful week, just like every other! 1st morning began with a few classes- we had an in-class Accounts Quiz which was rather interesting; I then put my brother on a cab, to get him to the airport. Post-lunch, we had our last IV session for the term- perhaps the actual Industrial Visits will start next term; each group has been allotted a faculty mentor and a meeting with them has been scheduled for 8th of September.

We’re going over understanding financial statements in the FAC classes. We’ve picked up a balance sheet for 2015/2014 and are trying a bunch of ratios on it- solvency ratios, liquidity ratios, activity ratios- all of which give different, relevant information about the company’s performance. Meanwhile, we discussed the Product Life Cycle theory in Marketing class; products have life cycles, just like everything else on the planet! And, now with the growing climate change, the planet has a shortened one too.

3rd September began at mid-night with someone sending out an e-mail to the whole PGP1 batch, wishing someone a Happy Birthday, and asking for everyone else to join in the celebration. While everyone was invited to ‘join in’, the sender managed to forget to mention the venue! This of course resulted in a series of replies to the e-mail, replete with memes and jokes. Then, morning began with OM Quiz papers being shown; surprisingly, I scored good marks! After a few classes, we then had a QT quiz at 4:50 p.m. A guest lecture titled ‘Are you a Dreamer?’ was conducted by Zephyr- the Psychology Interest Group, at 11 a.m. The title sure was misleading- the talk was about actual dreams & goals and how to go about achieving them and not about interpreting dreams, as I’d construed! Right after the QT Quiz, we got ourselves momos at JAM, and then some burgers from Burger Planet! As part of Janmashtami celebrations, some rangoli-making, matki-painting, matki phod and tug-of-war competitions were organized by the Cultural Committee, on the football field, around 8:30 p.m.
Later in the night, we got to making video rèsumès- different strategies were adopted by people in this regard- some sat, poker straight in front of their laptops, a desk lamp being used to light up their faces while they read text out from a word document; others got friends to record them talking, with a whiteboard in the background with some text; I thought about writing stuff down in a notebook and eventually just stood in front of a lady with a phone camera and began talking! All done, and in one take!

4th morning began with some classes; in the Business Communication class, we wrote out a report, in groups! Group tasks are always fun! The OM Professor has decided to conduct surprise quizzes in every other class! Faasos was on campus and we got ourselves some nice rolls and food.There was then a Marketing Mid-term to be studied for- cases, the textbook and some PPT’s.

5th morning- Teacher’s Day- and Marketing MidTerm day too. The MidTerm was rather okay- the marketing class right after was a lot more interesting. The current case deals with an innovation in the Shower business that has somehow really caught my fancy. Meanwhile, we’re working on getting a Mall Partner on board for IRIS, this year. In the evening, extended Janmashtami celebrations were held at the Radha-Krishna mandir, including a procession, games and matki phod. It ended with mid-night aarti.

Today morning began with nothing and still feels a lot like nothing; there are a couple of assignments to be done, and, that’s about it! The PGP-2’s meanwhile are returning from their term-breaks.
A couple of the exchange programme students have begun to arrive on campus- the Student Exchange Committee people are attempting to show them around campus. Over lunch at Mess 2, one of these days, I happened to spend a considerable amount of time watching one of them trying to demonstrate the ‘right’ way to eat chicken curry and rotis to a French guy. Now, the French guy managed to get it perfectly right, but, the varied attempts at demonstration were just hilarious!

1/09/2015

01/09/2015; 02:43:


Ah, it’s been a while; I miss the feeling of my fingers against my keyboard- I guess that’s what it is, with this new-age of writing- no one reminisces over the smell of fresh paper or that feeling of a freshly-refilled ink pen scrawling furiously over pages and pages.

26th morning began with a few classes and the marks of the QT surprise quiz being sent out over e-mail. We had an interesting discussion on the importance of ethics in business decision making, in the OB class. Classes ended by 3:30 post which we headed to see the ME Mid-term papers. Soon, an e-mail announcing momos at JAM was received much to everyone’s delight- it is a regular Monday feature, I guess.
There was then an IV assignment to be done- filling in details about organizational profile and the like. I then had a nice, long nap and was woken up close to 10 p.m. to attend a session of the ‘Marketing Capsules’, courtesy Mercur-I, the Marketing Club.

We had an 8:45 SMOD (Spreadsheet Modelling) class on 27th morning; we later discussed the best way to send across bad news over e-mail, in the Business Communication class. The 3:30 slot was free and was thus spent eating pasta in Mess 2- I remember giving them feedback, two months ago, when they’d added a bunch of stuff to their menu and, they’ve taken the feedback rather well- the pasta was delicious! An IV class was scheduled at 5 p.m.- the classes are awesome- it’s a pretty relaxed atmosphere and we pick up very relevant information! We spoke about the best way to word questions, the kind that will elicit positive, detailed responses from the company spokesperson. Later in the night, after deciding that it was positively too late to send a Rakhi home- one that would reach in time for Saturday that is- I got browsing the internet. I stumbled upon shopping websites that perhaps I hadn’t even heard of before- talk about research! Most websites had chocolate/mithai/rakhi combos- now, this was a serious problem- my brother doesn’t really like chocolate- I most definitely needed to send a ‘rakhi-only’ package. I finally settled on a box of 10 cartoon character-themed rakhis- of the 10, he could pick out the 2 he liked (or despised the least) and that’d be just perfect. They also promised delivery by the 29th- ‘Assured Rakhi Delivery’ - and the deed was done.

The last session of the SMOD course was held on 28th afternoon. Soon after, we headed over to Medicaps College which is pretty nearby, to collect our certificates for the Basketball Event that we’d won as part of their Sports Fest in April. To our surprise and delight(!) we were also given medals and a trophy. The trophy looks beautiful, sitting on the shelf across from me! We then headed out to Indore city- on the iBus- it was my first time on the iBus- and, it was pretty convenient! We got off at Palasia and headed straight to O2 café and ordered more food than we could eat! Some apple-picking at More later, we were on our way back to campus. We had our first meeting as the Utsaha Media team- it’s a small team, about half the size of the IRIS Media time- looking forward to doing a lot of work! We threw around ideas for blogspots and promotion in general. Meanwhile, a list was drawn up to divide up the different social media platforms for IRIS- and I ended up with Facebook. Looking forward to running a lively, engaging page!

29th- Rakhi! I spent most of the morning as well as a good part of the afternoon asleep. Saturday wasn’t technically off- a couple of sections did have classes- well, but, ours didn’t! Once I was mostly awake, I called home to check on the status of the rakhis that I’d ordered online- yes, they had reached that morning. Further, my brother had decided that he was only going to have me put them on- he was soon to be on his way to Indore! And, soon meant soon! He was due to land in Indore, on the evening flight, the same day. That gave me a few hours that I spent trying to get a guest room booked for my unlikely (though very appreciated) guest! I then headed to the airport and proceeded to launch myself at my brother right as he walked out through the arrival gates. We were soon on campus- by this time, I’d managed to inform at least half the campus about my brother’s arrival and had everyone convinced that they needed to meet him! After getting the brother a place to sleep and getting him asleep too, I headed over to the IRIS Media team meeting- we need to get working on getting a mall/ multiplex partner on board.

30th morning began with an early morning phone call from my brother- he was wide-awake and ready to explore! This was perhaps the earliest I’ve ever managed to get out of bed on a Sunday morning! We headed out for lunch and then deciding that there was nothing more to be done, we headed back to campus. He got a few hours of sleep while I met the assignment group over at the library- for a marketing and OM assignment that ought to be submitted this week. In the evening, I took the brother out to Chappan- perhaps the best-known street food location in this part of the country! Once back, my brother headed over to ‘chill’ with some new-found friends- my classmates!

31st- Monday morning- classes were okay; a quiz announcement around lunch time was not that great- but, well. Surprise quizzes are definitely better than pre-announced ones- and, at 4:50, we had a short MicroEconomics quiz. Some food at Mess 2 was in order; after the brother had indulged in some cricket and some snooker-playing, we got more food at the night mess! It’s been good having the brother around; he’s heading home in the morning, so, that’s about it, for now!